A whole bunch of stuff that rarely involves anything to do with breakfast.

Thursday, June 02, 2011

NRL 2011 - Round 13: Living on a Prayer (aka we're halfway there)

We’re about half-way through the 2011 season (give or take) and the shape of the NRL ladder seems to be making itself slightly clearer. I dare say that at this juncture, every team still has the chance to make it into the finals – don’t quote me on that one though, maths and logic were never my forte (kickboxing and astronautical exploration are more me) – but it’s safe to say that not every team actually has the skill to make said finals; the Roosters and the Titans, for example. I wonder if the Roosters will continue the pattern of being shit one year, making it to the Grand Final the next, then being even shitter than the first year, then coming good again? Look out 2012, it’s the year of the chooks.

Not really, 2012 will be the year of world apocalypse according to the Mayans and John Cusack. Bad luck, Roosters.

We can safely say that the Dragons are the form team again/still, and there was one report this week of a bookie who was already paying the punters who had backed the Saints for a grand final win (to do that at this stage of the comp reeks of stupidity and sloppy PR for mine, but fuck it; it filled half a column in the sports section), while teams like Manly and the Warriors are surprising a few people by not being incredibly shit.

It has been easy (and fun) to hate Manly in the past – any team that boasted Geoff Toovey, Des Hasler, Cliff Lyons and Spud Carroll in their playing roster deserve to be hated. But their form lately has been undeniably impressive, which is definitely a turnaround from the days when they had to cheat to win games. Young players like Kieren Foran, Daly Chery-Evans and Will Hopoate, combined with old heads Bretty Stewart and Tony Watmough back on the paddock and playing well has the ratio of fans to parole officers at Brookvale Oval finally starting to even up.

That’s an almost obscene amount of away teams that I'm tipping, which just goes to show how shithouse half of these teams are going, or how bad at tipping I really am.

Raidersvs CowboysThere has a whole Vikingship of contention over whether Terry Campese would make this his comeback game from injury, and from all reports (the guy at the desk behind mine), the answer is “no.” This has given Josh “I’m really not as bad as you all thought I was” McCrone and Sam “TBC” Williams another chance to become the greatest halves combination in the history of the universe. Matt “I can do it coach! Just put me in the game coach!” Orford has been told to pretend he’s sick and given an all-access pass to Timezone for the week to keep him out of the way.

The Raiders’ odds of winning the premiership have also risen dramatically from a fairly outside chance of $58 to a still-fairly-outside-chance at $23 following two wins in a row… Two wins? Doesn’t take much to impress the TAB faithful, eh?

After much-improved performances against the Storm and the Doggies, Canberra has finally shown that they do have the ability to play footy, and their giant front-rowers aren’t a massive bunch of pussies. Meanwhile, the Cowbs have been racking up victories of all sorts – scrappy, gritty, come-from-behind and controlled. If the Raiders can contain Thursty Thurston for the full eighty minutes (possibly by sacrificing one of the players’ wives for him), they’ll go a long way towards giving a massive “fuck you!” to their detractors and a big ol’ “fuck you” to the rest of the comp.

Of course, if they lose, I’ll be giving them a nice “fuck you” from the grandstand. And they’ll have no choice but to love it.

PS. Go Raiders! WOO!

Alan Tongue - undisputed piggyback champion of the world

Did anyone else notice I picked another full round last week? Well I did, and you should have heard about it because I rang the whole world and sent them all email and twittered them and facebooked their inbox and even went on MySpace to let everyone know.

10 comments:

Goal thief
said...

Who is your pick as the "dark horse" for the premiership?Blind faith and one-eyed support aside, as a betting thief, who should I lay my cold hard cash, that used to be someone else's hard earned cash, on?

p.s. 4 commas in one sentence is a new record for me. I will attempt to better that in the future.p.p.s. MySpace is so 2005.

The Mister Evil Breakfast African American Pony Chance (MEBAAPC)for this year would be the Storm. Sure, they're not quite as tip-top as they used to be, but that happens when you're exposed as being massive cheats and forced to give up a few gun players. They still have a shedload of representatives in their team though, so they shouldn't really have too much trouble making it a long way through the finals series. It would do the team (and the quaint village of Melbourne) all kinds of good to win back some kind of dignity with a salary-capped victory.

Still, I can't go past the Dragons.

I like commas. I'm going to name my first born child Comma. It will be ironic if s/he can't read. My second born will be called Irony. S/he will never know the correct meaning of it.

Hmmm, the Storm, okay, very interesting choice. Well with the current betting scandals going about the place, I'm a little gun shy to have a crazy punt, and I'm fairly shy of guns at the best of times as well.So I'll avoid the Green Machine and focus on the Steelers, Stormers, and the two NZ teams, Warriors and Broncos, then.

I used to have a MySpace account, in 2004, but I found that it was quite easy to track me down, so I had to delete it and start with a smaller site, Facebook, to do my cyber-stalking. Unfortunately, my penchant for taking photos of places I've been, and including my face, doesn't bode well for "flying under the radar". So now I'm focusing purely on bloggers. Although it is concerning to have someone interested in my web history.Who is your daddy, and what does he do?

p.s. I hope you noticed a 5 comma sentence in there.p.p.s. I like using p.s.'s (that is not grammatically correct, but the thousands of your readers will understand what I'm getting at)

I had a MySpace account too, but when I signed up for it, they kept asking me too many personal questions ("what is your name" and "please choose a password") and I got a bit freaked out by its clinginess and left it as a blank page. I am assuming that in thousands of years, scholars will come across my blank MySpace account and deem me a creative genius. "Everyone else had filled their screen with information and opinions," they'll say. "But Mister Evil Breakfast was revolutionary in his endeavour to keep his page completely free of anything. I deem him a creative genius."

In all honesty, I am just really lazy. Still, creatively so.

I used to really like using Pea-Esses as well, but have given them up as I found that they were a gateway into never actually ending a letter or email. I'm still writing a letter to my gran from 1993 that is now up to 274 PS's, most of which say, "Sorry this is so late; I am really going to send this letter now."

Hi, I jus came acros your blog and found it very intersting. I think Ill be using it as refernce for researching rugby from now on. I recently arivved in Australia from Malaysia and like rugby. There quite tough arent they :) I have chose to follow the canberra team to, go brumbies!

Welcome to Australia, tiger. Glad you decided to plonk your arse here. I'm not sure if I can help you learn too much about the Brumbies though (sorry), as I don't follow rugby union. I didn't even know they still played it, honestly. I thought it had been outlawed like jousting, duelling and seal clubbing.

I recommend you buy yourself a Raiders jersey and follow the Raiders. In time, you too will be able to use the word 'Tongue' as a double entendre.

Thanks for looking at my blog. It's people like you who warm my heart. Also, my apartment, because if you stop following me, I'll burn you in my furnace.